


Frost Bite

by ticktockclockwork



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-27
Updated: 2012-12-27
Packaged: 2017-11-22 16:28:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/611855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ticktockclockwork/pseuds/ticktockclockwork





	Frost Bite

His fingertips trace across the surface of the water and he doesn’t try to distinguish where he ends and the water begins. It’s cold, as it tends to be in the dead of winter, and he’s sure he hears it calling his name but it’s all muddled, foggy in his ears. No, no that isn’t his name at all. They’re mistaking him for someone else.

The kiss on his lips is blue and he thinks that that’s okay. That color is in this season. Brings out his eyes, the snowflakes caught amongst the lashes. Dying glimmers of the wonders of the world, numerical combinations of science and sadness. He wishes his eyesight were better, to see the feathers and the wings of the impossible water. Of the water so cold it turned to ice.

He likes to think he’s a snowflake too. Not at all special, drifting down in a crowd, occasionally catching onto others but inevitably collapsing to the ground, trampled and lost in a sea of more. There to melt and die and be reborn to do the whole tedious process over again. Yes, perhaps he was a snowflake. Crystalline and cold. Delicate but not in the breakable sense. He could no break. He could be crushed and buried, he could be lost, ignored. But he could not break. He was too small for that now, too small for anyone’s fingers to touch.

The boat makes a gentle rocking motion and the placid lake sea beneath him; lulls him further away. The fish must be waking up. The mud skippers, the craw dads. Who else could be dancing beneath the bow? Who else would come to sing him goodbye. It makes him smile and he cracks. His lips hurt. No they don’t. Wait for it. No. It’s gone. It was never there to begin with.

His mind is racing, telling him to listen. But he failed linguistics in school and he doesn’t understand the language of the trees or the birds or the snow that has fallen to keep him still. He can’t move and he wonders if this is that moment between waking and sleeping where you’re supposed to jerk awake, a kick of the power source, bang. There is no kick and there is no bang and he thinks he must just be dreaming. When did he fall asleep?

The dancing has begun and his lips are hurting and his teeth are showing but they look like snow as well. Can he sing? Can you sing in your sleep? He wants to sing because he hears music and he wants to join in. It’s a festival around him. Not close enough to see, but he hears the voices. He wants to see them. Dance with them. It. Them. Him.

This isn’t right.

His fingers are an anchor but it’s been pulled free, he’s tipping, sea sick.

This isn’t right.

His lips hurt. His body aches.

This isn’t right.

The titanic slams into the iceberg and he feels the jerk the bang. He’s waking up. Waking up has never felt like this before. He doesn’t like it. He’d rather sleep.

This isn’t right.

It’s his name again and he wonders how they know. He never told them that. That’s not theirs to take. Give it back. It was given to another, whispered and yelled and mocked and swallowed. His name was stolen and coveted and then drowned. It isn’t theirs. They have no right.

This isn’t right.

His whole world tips. Columbus misses the America’s by an inch. He dies at sea. The snowflakes are gone, his lips are left without decoration. Blue and cracked. So last season.

This is not right.

His blanket is removed, they give him a bed. It’s occupied. He can tell. But he’s tangled in sheets and he can’t break free. He wants to sleep but they won’t let him. He wants to dream but they won’t let him.

“John.”

This is not right.

He’s seen this ending before and it’s wrong. Rough draft. Binned, upgraded, fixed. This is wrong. Three years kind of wrong. Who do they think they are, changing the script without telling him? He doesn’t know his lines. He doesn’t recognize these songs.

This is not at all right.

Eyes open. Jack frost nipping at his nose. It hurts. All of it. This must not be a dream at all. Nightmares. Zombies and ghosts. Just his luck. He left his handgun at him.

“John.”

That isn’t yours, he thinks. That isn’t yours that isn’t yours that isn’t yours “that isn’t yours.”

It’s a stampede of smoke mustangs from his mouth, words written and dissolved. Call him the Caterpillar. “Who. Are. You.” They hurt. Tiny shards of unwanted truths littering her tongue, his teeth, his lips.

“John.”

No, this isn’t right. And he wants nothing to do with it. This is his bow, his goodbye. All aboard. Set sail. Let him go, John. John. John. john.

“John.”


End file.
